Danica Patrick Can Expect True Test in Saturday's Race

The second stop on NASCAR's "Danica Live Tour" is at Auto Club Speedway of California this weekend and really, is there any more appropriate setting than the land of red carpets and bright spotlights for Danica Patrick to meet her next racing challenge?

In a place that rewards fame as much as substance, Patrick is intent on having both.

She, more than anyone else in American racing, is thriving on this masterfully mixed potion of sports and celebrity.

Patrick's racing talents -- she is the first woman to win an IndyCar race -- and magazine-cover looks and personality have give her a world of opportunities away from the track. Her off-track pursuits and exposure have created a demand and financial support for her behind the wheel.

And she makes no apologies for that. Nor should she.

In the six days since her NASCAR debut ended in a 12-car pile-up at Daytona International Speedway, she has already logged as many miles on the California freeways as she will in Saturday's 150-lap Nationwide Race. She has appeared on talk shows hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, Bonnie Hunt, Ryan Seacrest and Ellen DeGeneres, who, interestingly, identified her firstly as a NASCAR driver.

She taped an upcoming episode of the popular "Chelsea Lately" show. And she did interviews with CBS Evening News and CNN for upcoming features.

Last weekend's Daytona 500 winner Jamie McMurray joked to reporters that he half-expected to see a story and photo of "Danica" in the paper the morning after he won NASCAR's biggest event.

Actually, he was only half-joking.

"I'm lucky, I'm really lucky (that people are interested), but I can't control how much is out there and what people say and how much they say,'' Patrick said last week in Daytona Beach.

"I don't by any means want to take away from amazing drivers that are out there and doing well. ... it's not my mission to be the big story.

"On the other hand, if I can do anything to help the series and other drivers and perhaps drag in some sponsors, I'm happy to do it.''

To that end, Patrick's presence is already having an impact. Her Nationwide series debut last Saturday on ESPN2 had 4.2 million viewers, up 33 percent from the 2009 race and officially the most-viewed Nationwide Series cable broadcast ever. The week before, her ARCA race on SPEED channel earned a 78 percent increase in viewership.

Of course, the media attention Patrick receives is old news to racers in the IZOD IndyCar Series, where Patrick races full-time for Michael Andretti's Andretti Autosport team. Media attention of any kind is embraced there.

She is making three of her 13 NASCAR starts (including Las Vegas next week) before the IndyCar season begins March 14 in Sao Paolo, Brazil, and spreading out the others through the summer and after the open-wheel season ends in October.

"I'm watching it with interest,'' Patrick's former Indy car teammate Dario Franchitti said this week of the NASCAR media blitz.

The 2007 Indianapolis 500 winner Franchitti ran an abbreviated 2008 NASCAR season before his team was forced to fold due to lack of funding. He returned to open-wheel last year and won the 2009 IndyCar championship for the Target Ganassi team.

He's seen both sides of the fence, but even he concedes the attention on Patrick's part-time NASCAR foray has seemed over the top.

"I was amazed that people were expressing the amount of doubt about her initially,'' Franchitti observed.

"Having said that, she's going to have to learn and she's got a lot to do still. Obviously the step up from ARCA is huge and in my opinion, the Daytona Nationwide race is one of the hardest races I ever did.

"What I like, however, is that a good bit of people are giving her the benefit of the doubt, giving her positive feedback.''

And Patrick is earning it the honest way.

"She just soaks it up, man, asks question after question after question,'' said Tony Eury Jr., her crew chief and a part-owner on her JR Motorsports No. 7 GoDaddy.com Chevy.

Listening to her speak, it's obvious that her NASCAR vernacular has grown exponentially in the two months since her first stock car test, where she was still figuring out the logistics of putting her helmet on once she was in the car.

After practice last week she knowledgeably talked about her car rolling through the corners, push conditions, over steer, closing rates, tire grip. ... all of it pure "racin' speak" that you'd expect of a more-experienced stock car driver.

During her down time she studied in-car camera shots and race footage from last year's Nationwide races.

And behind the scenes, she has made a real effort to reach out for advice. Patrick sought out experienced drivers throughout NASCAR's Daytona Speedweeks and, equally as important, listened to what they had to say.

During the Nationwide Series pre-race drivers meeting, for example, she and Kasey Kahne huddled just outside
the door talking intently -- eventually joined by former IndyCar Series champ and two-time Sprint Cup champ Tony Stewart, who went on to win the Nationwide race.

Yet, beyond the genuine effort Patrick is making, the biggest thing in her favor may be the fact that she didn't have immediate success.

It's kept her humble, hungry and studious.

Her sixth-place showing in the ARCA race proved that she had game. Her car was easily the class of the field, but she still had to drive it to the checkered flag.

Being collected in a 12-car crash in the Nationwide debut will essentially be counted as a push. It wasn't her fault and doesn't reflect on her driving ability any more than 2004 Daytona 500 winner Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s tumbling down the backstretch a few laps later is representative of his talent.

But Daytona is an anomaly on her 13-race schedule -- more car than driver compared to other venues. This weekend's 2-mile track in Fontana, Calif. will be a truer test of where she is early in her stock car evolution.

And she'd be the first to admit she's going to have to pick up the pace. She was almost two seconds off the quickest times -- 37th out of 44 cars -- in Friday's opening practice. As she went through the turns, you could hear from the in-car camera the actions of an inexperienced stock car driver as she frequently feathered the throttle.

By the end of the final practice a bit later in the afternoon, her throttle action was smooth, and she jumped to 27th fastest, only 1.235 seconds off the top lap time.

"We are real patient,' JR Motorsports namesake Dale Earnhardt Jr. said Friday from California. "We have a lot of responsibility in giving her a good opportunity and she has a lot of races to learn and understand these cars."

And, he added, "She is a lot of fun to be around.''